Talk to your children about the Lord

 Prayer Practice

Breath Prayer – Take 2-3 minutes today to pray a simple breath prayer. Get somewhere quiet and relaxing. Breathe in deeply, and then breathe out fully. As you breathe in, ask God to fill you with His presence, grace, love, peace, etc. Consider using the list of spiritual fruit in Galatians 5:22-23. As you breathe out, offer to God the things you need Him to take from you – sin, doubt, shame, anxiety, fear, etc. Pray this way for just a few minutes, trusting God to work, and then begin reading today’s Scripture.

DAILY READING

Deuteronomy 6:4-9

REFLECTION

The Greatest Commandment

 by Kelsey Bacon

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength."

I am so incredibly grateful that I grew up in a home with parents who raised me to love the Lord. I know that everyone's faith journey is different, and God brings people to Jesus in many different ways. But as I read these verses describing how we must live and breathe the above command, I am ever grateful for the example my parents set. The words of Jesus were impressed upon us as kids, and the actions of Christ demonstrated to us not only in my mom and dad, but also in the people they stationed around us to be our mentors and our prayer warriors. I think about the members of their small group who have been praying for myself and my siblings for years and years, about the countless VBSs and Carol Choirs they drove us to. I think about the deep faith conversations we've had at the kitchen table. My mom and dad love the Lord with all their heart, soul, and strength, and they have demonstrated that love to us.

The sentiment in today's passage is clear: engrave these words onto your heart and let them be not only memorized in your mind, but memorized in your soul. Make this command a part of who you are. And when it is so deeply ingrained in you, it will spill out your very pores without you even trying. Jesus asks us to love him and to love one another. In Mark 12, he adds "And love your neighbor as yourself" to this greatest commandment, saying that both of these commandments are the most important. So ask yourself today: am I walking with these every day? Am I impressing them upon those around me, through my words and actions? 

We will never love perfectly. My parents, wonderful as they are, aren't perfect. Just like I was not a perfect kid. But God is perfect enough for all of us, so even when we can't love perfectly he fills in our gaps. So let's do what this verse says. Let's write this command on our door frames (or bathroom mirrors or fridge magnets or sticky notes) and keep it constantly bound to us that we can not only be impressed upon, but can impress it upon others just as others have impressed it upon us.